Letters to the Editor
dendrio
Published Letters: 200 Editor's Choice: 27
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A Not-So-Short Story
[Read the article: My husband's dog is incontinent and I can't stand it]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Since there is also a young child in this house, I'd like to tell a story.
Once upon a time, there was a cute little bloodhound-mix puppy. He was brought home by a family who's kids insisted that they wanted a dog. Unfortunately, he grew to be quite a large dog, and the kids lost interest in him when they realized that he had to be walked, fed, and trained. He was never fixed because no one could be bothered. He was beaten for having accidents in the house, which puppies do, especially when there isn't anyone around willing to spend the time and effort to house train them or take them for walks. He began to spend more and more time by himself, isolated and ignored. He behaved inappropriately and destructively, was nervous and anxious.
Finally, after a couple months, the parents took the puppy to the local dog pound to be either adopted or destroyed. Lesson learned by their children: When something is inconvenient and messy, get rid of it in the most expedient manner possible. I hope their kids don't grow up having internalized this lesson by the time their own parents get messy and inconvenient.
For the puppy, the story has a happy ending. We adopted him one day before he was scheduled to be destroyed, trained him, got him over his fear of anyone carrying a blunt object, worked through his nervousness and anxiety issues, which was VERY messy and inconvenient, not to mention expensive. There were tears, there were some long dark nights of the soul, it was by no means easy. But we found a way to help him because there really wasn't another option. There was trial, there was error and finally success.
I'm always glad when I hear that people recognize about themselves that they aren't pet people. That means fewer pets brought into homes where they are not really wanted. But the letter writer inherited this situation and it would be a really troubling lesson to teach her child that when something is messy and inconvenient, the best thing to do is ignore it, get rid of it, and resent it.
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Usually, it doesn't have to be either/or
[Read the article: At home with David Brooks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Something I've always wondered about our society and this issue: Why do we treat children like plague-carrying vermin? Because when we feel that we have to sequester babies and children to our individual single-family homes, we are dooming whomever is the caregiver to the same fate.
There are lots of jobs out there, not all mind you, but many, in which it would be entirely possible for a parent to have the child at work with them for part of the day, or to do the majority of work from home. Growing up as the daughter of a professor (academics generally have this latitude), I spent a lot of time in my dad's office, playing chess with his students or just reading in a corner, while he was teaching or getting some work done. Right now, I could absolutely do my researching job with a baby in a sling or a play pen, or even much of the time from home. Of course, it would not be permitted, forcing me to have to decide whether or not I can even have a child right now and if I do, would it be I or my husband who is forced to live the all-children-all-the-time life?
This, of course, requires that we raise our children to know how to act around adults and as a part of adult society. A side-effect of keeping them primarily in the home is that when they are taken out, they have no idea how to act. Similarily, many adults don't know how to act around children who are not their own and parents don't know how to react when other adults interact with their kids (raise your hand if you've ever been engaged in a conversation with a young child only to have a parent swoop down and snatch them away from you indignantly).
This entire argument should really, for many women, just be moot.
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Ick.
[Read the article: Marrying for love or money?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I’ll tell you what’s really unattractive in a man: constant whining that women only marry for money. Ceaselessly accusing the gender which you’d like to marry of being shallow gold-diggers is not a turn-on and becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. In my experience, men who claim this are actually flawed in a multitude of other ways, but can’t see it. They can’t figure out why no one wants to date them, so they buy into this old canard.
Just because men who have a lower income are less likely to be married to women of higher income doesn’t mean that the causal relationship is simply that women marry money. A man’s willingness and ability to work are often indicative of other more important issues, such as their future responsibility as a parent and their general maturity level.